Using the science of light to reduce food waste, improve meat quality

An Ontario company has just received a funding boost from the federal government for its smart visioning technology. 

P&P Optica of Waterloo has developed a system that harnesses the power of light to measure chemistry to improve meat quality and safety. The new funding will help promote its automated inspection system to meat processors. 

Using high end spectrometers, the system analyzes meat composition on the production line, evaluating tenderness, freshness and protein, water and fat content in real time. It can detect imperfections and eliminate foreign objects like plastic, bones and rubber. 

Why it matters: The technology adds an automated layer of inspection designed to reduce food waste at processing plants while alleviating labour pressure in a sector facing chronic worker shortages.

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“Food safety is such a big issue for the companies we work with, and they are looking at multi-pronged approaches to inspection, using X-rays, metal detectors and people. Our technology fills in gaps where these other things don’t work well, seeing things that are impossible to see,” says P&P Optica CEO Olga Pawluczyk.

“We see things differently than the human eye so we help reduce human inspection and help customers transfer people from inspection lines to other areas.”

The P&P Optica system can measure the chemical composition of every piece of meat produced in a facility whereas before, companies relied on sample testing, she said.

However, she stresses that the technology does not replace meat inspection by Canadian Food Inspection Agency or Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food & Rural Affairs inspectors.

“We are collecting an unprecedented amount of data that was not readily available before and we have customers now about to connect the dots from farm to fork,” she says. “We can give prescriptive data to customers so they can change processes in real time; by converting terabytes of data into actionable info, decisions that used to be made weekly or daily can now be made batch to batch.”

In addition to helping processors ensure consistent product quality – like verifying that a sausage is made exactly the same way every time – one of the system’s other advantages is the capacity to reduce food waste.

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For example, by detecting the presence of woody breast in chicken, a muscle abnormality that impacts texture and chewiness, affected meat can be diverted to a different product line instead of being discarded.

“How much waste we prevent is significant; it’s not just about quality. We find foreign objects (in real time) so we only have to throw out a few hundred pounds of meat instead of a half day’s or shift’s production,” Pawluczyk says.

The government funding has allowed her to expand her staff, supported a successful venture capital fundraising round and funded demonstration units of the visioning technology that the team can take to potential customers for testing in their facilities.

As well, the company’s recently expanded Waterloo headquarters now includes a new demonstration room that mimics a meat plant environment and allows for more and faster system testing.

The P&P Optica system is deployed in a number of meat processing plants in the United States but has yet to be adopted by any in Canada, although several Canadian companies, including Conestoga Meats in nearby Breslau, have supported the technology’s development.

According to Pawluczyk, it’s a matter of scale and affordability. Meat processors in the U.S. are much larger generally than those in Canada, making it easier to take a risk on new technology, but she’s optimistic this will change soon.

“The Canadian meat industry has supported us greatly and we forget sometimes the innovation culture here in our region, and how incredible it is in K-W (Kitchener-Waterloo) to have access to some of the best software engineers out there but be surrounded by farmland,” she notes. “The marriage of technology and food production is awesome in Canada, and it should be much higher; the continued support of government in food production will be a continued part of the success of P&P Optica and the industry.”